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"The Futurama Holiday Spectacular" (originally named Holiday Val-U-Pak) is the thirteenth episode of the sixth season of Futurama. This episode will be a Anthology of Interest-style episode focusing on three seasonal stories: one based on Xmas, one on Robanukah and one on Kwanzaa. It is the first in a set of four such episodes, the others being Reincarnation, Naturama, and Saturday Morning Fun Pit

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Plot

In every story, all earthlings die, exception made for the Robanukah story in which Bender Bending Rodríguez survives and the Kwanzaa episode in which only the crew dies for sure. This kind of disregard for continuity was never before experienced in the Futurama series, if not within the stories in the "Anthology of Interest I" and "II", from which this episode also takes the three-stories setting.

First Story: X-Mas

The first story is about Xmas. Philip J. Fry I is gloomy because he still doesn't understand the Xmas holiday, therefore Santa explains it in a song. When they realize they do not own a pine tree, as Xmas tradition would require, they want to get one. Pine trees are extinct, except they seem to ski with them in the beginning, therefore, they go to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, right next to the Germ Welfare Repository. They then are able to obtain a seed for the pine tree, which appears to be contaminated with germs and Fry plants it in front of the Planet Express Building. One year later, it has grown not more than six feet and Nixon steals it in order to replant it in front of the White House to celebrate the annual White House Christmas lighting. And right after the lighting, the tree starts growing huge and shooting pinecones on the ground, reforestating PlanetEarth. This brings very high levels of oxygen. This is when Bender says: "I don't recall doing anything for a while, but I still think I deserve a smoke!". When he lights his cigar, the oxygen in the air catches on fire transforming the whole earth into a ball of fire.

Second Story: Robanukah

The second story is about Robanukah. Bender is upset because everyone gets excited about holidays but not about Robanukah. When he is accused to have invented Robanukah himself just to skip days of work, he makes up a song in which he describes Robanukah traditions. One of these is to watch two fem-bots wrestling in petroleum oil. Unfortunately, there is no petroleum left on earth. The professor states there should be some petroleum deep down towards the center of the earth. They therefore modify the Planet Express Ship in order to dig through ground. They finally go too deep and all the crew but Bender is crushed due to the intense pressure. Bender then sits singing "Bender is great" for 500 million years. When he looks back to the crew, he finds out they finally turned into petroleum oil, "I thought they were selfish, but in the end, it turns out it was I that thought they were selfish!", so he climbs back to surface and discovers that the few days worth of oil lasted for millions of years. This is a reference to the candles in Hanukkah ( called Chanukah) that lasted 8 days when it seemed they would only last a night. Bender then celebrates Robanukah with the two fem-bots wrestling in lots of petroleum oil.

Third Story: Kwanzaa

The Third story is about Kwanzaa. The crew gathers at the Conrads' place to celebrate Kwanzaa. This is when they want to know more about Kwanzaa, so Kwanzaabot sings a song about it and its traditions. They therefore find out they have to light some candles, which have to be made 100% out of beeswax. All bees on earth are attacked by parasites and cannot produce any beeswax. Fry then suggests the hive of the space bees and so they go. Once there they see how all the bees are crashing against walls and floors and exploding. The queen bee then explains that they have been attacked by parasites themselves and can't do anything but just talk smack to each other. Hermes wants to stop this bee on bee conflict and decides to African-Americanize the space bees. He tells them about the values of Kwanzaa, about unity. Hermes' speech about Kwanzaa brings back the Kwanzaa spirit, which kills all the parasites. Now the space bees are united again and turn against the crew, killing Kwanzaabot and making the crew into candles to celebrate Kwanzaa.